Annihilation was the only answer. Plain and simple.
The telescopic lens on the outer hull of the vessel was in full array. The breadth of its view, an all-encompassing eye, inhaled the light of the cosmos and spewed the raw data of its most recent scan onto my tablet in a mess of beeps and blinks—a language alien to most. But not to me. This symphony of hollow tones told the secrets that lay beyond. Floating in the cockpit, I shuddered at the thought of what this cosmic concerto was saying, just as a voice on the radio crackled through.
“Commander Caine, do you read?”
“I read, Olympus.”
“These array readings—this has to be The Ark, is it not?”
No, I wanted to say. But my throat lost the will to dance out any tune that mimicked language.
“Commander Caine?”
The readings continued to flood in. They said what I had feared, but what all of them below dismissed—that what was coming wasn’t some savior, or some remnant signal from The Ark, Earth’s last hope for colonization. No—the answer was harrowingly more elegant than that.
“Caine, this has to be the Ark! They’ve arrived!”
Olympus base roared in thunderous applause as the Mars ground crew celebrated. I could almost hear them without the radio. Their ignorance was deafening.
This was not the Ark—similar gamma readings, only much larger than the ship.
Too large.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them that—
Annihilation was the only answer. Plain and simple.
__________
#FlashFiction
#MicroFiction
Photo by Mohammad Alizade on Unsplash
Story originally published January 14, 2023 for the NYCMidnight 250-Word Microfiction Challenge 2022, Round 2
